Helping kids experience summer fun

September 3, 2019

Sept. 3, 2019

By Kristena Schutt-Moore

Nine-year-old Quinn Ferrier and her family have a cottage on Paudash Lake, and according to Quinn that is where they get to do “awesome summer stuff.”
But last year Quinn started thinking about the kids who don’t get to experience what she does every summer. “Last year we lost our neighbour to cancer, so one night at the dinner table I said that I wanted to help kids go to camp and we all started brainstorming ways to do that and I just started fundraising.”
The Ferrier family has experienced cancer several times within their family as well, so they selected Camp Oochigeas as the camp they were going to help support because it is a place that helps children fighting cancer get the full summer camp experience.
They started last summer with a bottle and can drive at their cottage. The surrounding community soon got involved with neighbours dropping off their empties for Quinn and her sister Riley to sort and deliver to the Beer Store.
When not at the cottage and back in school the sisters worked together to create bracelets and sell them during lunch to continue raising funds. Quinn’s goal is to raise $2,000 so that she can help one kid go to Camp Oochigeas for a week. Over the past year she has been able to raise $1,800.
Quinn says she has a growing goal. Once she has been able to send one kid to camp she is going to work towards sending another kid to camp. “I’m not going to stop, I want to help as many kids as I can.”
With school around the corner the can and bottle collection will be stopping for the winter months but the fundraiser will go on. The Ferrier family has set up an email address, helpsendakid@gmail.com where those interested in supporting Quinn in her goal can contact her, and her parents Mark and Beth, about making a donation or learning more about supporting a kid to go to camp.
Over the summer, people who have seen Quinn and Riley delivering their bottles to The Beer Store have made donations to the fundraiser when they return their own bottles. Neighbours have heard about Quinn’s goal and have also started dropping off their bottles and cans at the Ferrier home and cottage. Now that they are going back to school they will no longer be accepting drop offs at the cottage, until next summer.
To-date the sisters believe that they have processed over 20,000 bottles and cans and they plan to keep that number growing once school is over. They also are in the planning stages of some fundraisers for next summer. The one Quinn is looking forward to is the “huge garage sale” she wants to have at the cottage.
Quinn would like to thank all those who helped them this summer, The Beer Store including Sheila and Jenny, for taking and helping collect the empties, The Cardiff Store owners Brenda, Brock and Pat and their team for helping sort out empties, Brendan from the Granite Restaurant for their generous donations of bottles after long weekends, Paudash Decks and Docks for their cash donation towards her goal, and “the people of Bancroft who were giving their donations at the beer story every time we are there.”